Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Many kids have short attention spans, and I find myself saying "focus!" quite often when I am teaching. Other favorite phrases are "pay attention" and "concentrate." If you let your mind wander for just one second, you can lose the whole song. One thing music education teaches you is how to pay attention.

In Buddhism, this is what meditation teaches us. It teaches us how to pay attention to our own breath as well as the world around us. When we can pay attention, we can see what is really happening, verses what our ego thinks is happening.

For the past month, I have been working on my own focus. I committed to doing yoga 5 days a week before I put in my 2-3 hours of practice. It's been quite the boot camp of concentration, and I'm pretty sure it's changing my life.

Now my goal is to simply focus on each moment of the music when I sing or play piano. I use the word "simply" quite loosely, because the truth is that focusing on every single moment for the duration of a 5 minute song is anything but simple. It is hard work.

So my friends, that is what I have been up too. What have you been up to? I have to go to yoga. I'm trying Hot Yoga this week. I am surprised at how much I like it! I will write back soon.